Coleman Tents V.S. Ozark Trail Tents (REAL Pictures!)

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I’ve camped in lots of Coleman tents over the past few years, and even an Ozark Trail Cabin 10-Person tent, and here are my thoughts on both brands.

This is a picture of the Coleman logo on my Coleman Sundome 2-Person Tent (top) and the Ozark Trail logo on my Ozark Trail 10-Person Cabin Tent (bottom).

Test/Characteristics	Coleman	Ozark Trail
Rain Test	10-30 minutes heavy rain	10 minutes light rain
Taped Seams	No	No
Fabric Waterproofing	450-1000mm	None
Features	More features	Fewer features
Usage	More user-friendly	Less user-friendly
Quality	Better quality	Lower quality
Lifespan	~4-5 years	~1-2 years
Affordability	$$	$
Warranty	1 year	6 months

A table containing all the differences between Coleman and Ozark Trail tents.

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Here are the tents that I tested for this post:

Check out the Coleman Instant 10P (Amazon)

Check out the Coleman WeatherMaster 10P (Amazon)

Check out the Ozark Trail Cabin 10P (Amazon)

Read my review on the Coleman Instant 10P

Read my review on the Coleman WeatherMaster 10P

Read my review on the Ozark Trail Cabin 10P

Table Of Contents

Rain Test
Inverted Seams
Fabric Waterproofing
Door Size & Features
Window Size & Ventilation
Tent Set Up
Room Divider
Quality
Lifespan
Affordability
Where are Coleman and Ozark Trail Tents Made?
Warranty
Recommendation
Bonus Reading!

Rain Test

Coleman Instant Tent Rain Test

After my rain test, I found that my Coleman Instant Tents, I have both the 10-Person and 4-Person versions, were able to stay dry for about 10 minutes under heavy rain.

After which, I noticed that this seam connecting the tent body to the bathtub flooring would start leaking.

*I noticed that the inverted seam connecting the black fabric of the Coleman 10-Person Instant Cabin Tent to the bathtub flooring was leaking.*

Coleman Sundome Tent Rain Test

I also rain tested my Coleman Sundome Tents, and I have the regular 6-person version, the 6-Person Dark Room version, and also the Elite 6-Person version. All these tents were able to stay dry for about 30 to 35 minutes of heavy pouring rain.

After that, the same seam started leaking a little water into the tent:

*This is a picture of me checking the leakage inside the Coleman Sundome 6-Person Tent.*

Ozark Trail 10P Tent Rain Test

As for my Ozark Trail 10-Person Tent, it was able to stay dry only for about 10 minutes of mostly light rain and some moderate rainfall, not even heavy rain.

*This is the inverted seam connecting the blue tent fabric of the Ozark Trail 10-Person Cabin Tent to the bathtub flooring, which leaks in the rain, causes puddles to form on the floor.*

Inverted Seams

Both my Coleman and Ozark Trail Tents leaked through this inverted seam (all pictured above), because somehow, it usually doesn’t come seam taped.

In my experience, taped seams definitely keep water out much better than inverted seams. Here’s what a taped seam would look like:

*A close-up shot of the seam taping inside the Coleman Instant Tent 4.*

Fabric Waterproofing

Coleman Tents Waterproof Coating

I also noticed that the fabric of most of my Coleman Tents tend to stay dry in light to moderate rain, and would only start getting wet after 45 minutes to 1 hour of super heavy rainfall.

*Water running over the tent fabric of my Coleman WeatherMaster 10-Person Tent.*

Ozark Trail Tents Waterproof Coating

However, my Ozark Trail Tent’s fabric started getting pretty soaked after just that 15 minutes of mostly light to moderate rain.

*This is a picture of my hand after I touched the blue fabric at the bottom of the Ozark Trail 10-Person Cabin Tent. My hand is pretty damp.*

So, without tons of additional waterproofing, Ozark Trail tents are definitely not meant for rainy weather of any kind, even in light rain.

What’s the Waterproof Rating?

I suspect that’s because Coleman tents have fabrics that have a minimum waterproof rating of between 450-1000 millimeters, while Ozark Trail tents don’t have the same rating, and are meant to be used in only fair weather.

*This is a picture of me conducting a rain test on the WeatherMaster 10-Person Tent by using a stopwatch and a water hose.*

Door Size & Features

Coleman 10P Tent Doors

For a 10-person tent, I would expect the tent to have at least 2 doors, 1 on each opposite wall of the tent, and both my WeatherMaster 10-Person Tent and my Coleman 10-Person Instant Tent have 2 doors each.

*This is a picture of me ducking to get into the tent through the hinged D-door of the Coleman 10-Person Instant Cabin Tent.*

*This is a picture of me ducking to get through the back door of the Coleman 10-Person Instant Cabin Tent.*

In fact, one of these doors is even a hinged D-door, which makes going in and out of the tent that much easier. So, overall, very user-friendly.

*This is a picture of me ducking to get through the hinged D-door of the WeatherMaster 10-Person Tent.*

Ozark Trail 10P Tent Doors

In contrast, my Ozark Trail 10-Person Tent has only 1 door at the front of the tent. And Ozark Trail doesn’t have the super cool hinged door feature that Coleman has.

*This is a picture of me ducking to get through the door into the Ozark Trail 10-Person Family Cabin Tent.*

Window Size & Ventilation

Ozark Trail Tent Windows

The number of windows and the size of the windows in Ozark Trail Tents is also lacking when compared to Coleman tents.

*This is a picture of me opening 4 of the windows inside the Ozark Trail 10-Person Cabin Tent. All the windows are the same size.*

All these windows are pretty small, which limits ventilation on a hot day. And on top of that, all these windows need to be closed on a rainy day.

This is a picture of the rainfly and one of the windows of the Ozark Trail 10-Person Cabin Tent while it was raining lightly outside. Notice that the rainfly doesn’t protect much of the window mesh from water at all.

Coleman Instant 10P Tent Windows

On the other hand, my Coleman 10-Person Instant Tent has these humongous windows on every wall of the tent, which is great for hot day ventilation.

*This is a picture of me opening up the windows in the Coleman 10-Person Instant Dark Room Tent.*

Coleman WeatherMaster Tent Windows

And while my WeatherMaster 10-Person Tent doesn’t have super big windows, 2 of the windows are these huge, angled windows for ventilation on rainy days instead.

*This is a picture of the rain avoiding the angled windows of the Coleman WeatherMaster 10-Person Tent.*

Tent Set Up

Pole Sleeves

When I was setting up my Coleman and Ozark Trail tents, I noticed that the pole sleeves of the Ozark Trail tent were super long and snaggy, while Coleman tents tend to have much shorter and much more snag-free pole sleeves.

*This is what your Coleman WeatherMaster 10-Person Tent will look like after you’re done installing all the steel poles.*

Color-Coding

Also, the poles of my Ozark Trail tent were not color-coded, they were just all black, while my WeatherMaster 10-Person Tent had a little bit of color-coding, like this red band for the middle wall pole.

*This is a picture of me assembling all the 3 fiberglass roof poles and the 6 steel wall poles of the Ozark Trail 10-Person Family Cabin Tent.*

This is a picture of my brother pointing to the red band on one of the steel poles of the Coleman WeatherMaster 10-Person Tent. Notice that the pole sleeve in the middle is red in color for easy identification.

Room Divider

Ozark Trail Tent Divider

For the inside of the tent, when I was setting up my Ozark Trail room divider, I realized that the divider doesn’t even have a zip down the middle, for access into the other room.

*This is what the divider of the Ozark Trail 10-Person Cabin Tent looks like.*

Coleman Tent Divider

My Coleman tents at least had a zip down the middle of the divider.

*This is a picture of the WeatherMaster 10-Person Tent’s room divider.*

These aren’t like big glaring issues or anything, but you know, it’s the little things that count sometimes.

Quality

For quality, the materials used in both Coleman and Ozark Trail tents are about the same, like regular polyethylene flooring, and 68 to 75D polyester for the tent body and the rainfly.

*This is a picture of me touching the polyethylene flooring of the WeatherMaster 10-Person Tent.*

Ozark Trail Tents Quality

But the stitching in my Ozark Trail tent is not as great, there were loose threads all over the tent, and fairly big holes where the guylines are connected to the main tent body.

*This is one of the loose threads that I found near one of the the window zippers in the Ozark Trail 10-Person Cabin Tent.*

*I found pretty large holes in the stitching of the Ozark Trail 10-Person Cabin Tent, especially where the guylines are stitched to the main tent body.*

My door zipper kept snagging from the outside every single time I opened the door:

*This is a picture of my door zipper snagging on the outside rain cover of the Ozark Trail 10-Person Cabin Tent.*

And also, there was this sort of inconsistent mesh in 2 places around the tent.

*This is one of the mesh runs/inconsistent mesh that I found in the Ozark Trail 10-Person Cabin Tent.*

Coleman Tents Quality

As for my Coleman Tents, the stitching is generally not too bad, there were less loose threads, and the holes in the stitching were smaller.

*This is the inverted seam connecting the lighter brown fabric to the darker brown fabric of the tent body of the WeatherMaster 10-Person Tent.*

On top of that, the door zippers were much, much less snaggy. In fact, once you get to used to the rain cover outside the tent, you can actually zip the doors up without any snagging at all!

*This is a picture of me unzipping the back door of the Coleman WeatherMaster 10-Person Tent.*

And out of my 14 Coleman tents, only 1 of my Coleman tents (the Montana 8P) came with this weird inconsistent mesh.

*The ceiling mesh of the Coleman Montana 8-Person Tent was a little unsatisfactory; check out these inconsistent mesh patches throughout the entire tent.*

Lifespan

Lifespan of Ozark Trail Tents

I had this Ozark Trail Tent for a year and a bit before I noticed that the tent fabric started to degrade and get a little sticky.

*This is a picture of me running my hand over the tent fabric of the Ozark Trail 10-Person Cabin Tent, which feels a bit sticky.*

Also, my steel wall poles were showing signs of rust even though I did my best to dry them before packing.

Lifespan of Coleman Tents

On the other hand, I’ve had some of my Coleman Tents for about 3 to 4 years now, and I never noticed any of the tent fabric becoming sticky. And the steel poles of my WeatherMaster tent are still holding up fine.

*After assembly, here’s what all of the WeatherMaster 10-Person Tent’s steel poles look like. I put a red box around the 3 curved steel poles, because you need to set those up first.*

I actually even packed up one of my Coleman tents while it was still wet, and when I took it out a few months later, there was no mold or anything on it.

Affordability

While both Coleman and Ozark Trail are highly inexpensive family camping tents, this is where Ozark Trail outshines Coleman. While I paid between $250 to $350 for both my 10-Person Coleman Tents, I paid only about $100 for the Ozark Trail 10-Person Cabin Tent, which is less than half the price of my Coleman tents.

*This is the outer cardboard packaging of the Ozark Trail 10-Person Family Cabin Tent.*

In fact, even though this tent is one of the highest-rated and most popular Ozark Trail tents, it’s still plenty affordable at just over $100.

Where are Coleman and Ozark Trail Tents Made?

Ozark Trail is basically Walmart’s house brand, or private brand, and I think the reason Walmart and Coleman are able to keep their prices low is because all these tents are made in either China or Bangladesh.

This is what the Coleman Evanston 6-Person Tent looks like when bought brand new. Notice the Made in China label on the packaging.

Warranty

But just bear in mind that Coleman tents are warrantied for 1 year, while Walmart provides only a 6-month warranty for their Ozark Trail Tents.

Recommendation

So, essentially, here’s the bottom line.

While Ozark Trail tents are one of the least expensive family camping tents on the market, the waterproofing isn’t the best, the features, quality and lifespan of these tents aren’t that great. And for Coleman tents, they’re a little pricier than Ozark Trail tents, but you get better waterproofing, better features, and a better quality tent all around.

Basically, you get what you pay for.

I typically prefer Coleman tents because I’ve been using Coleman products since I was a kid, and I’ve gotten great value for money out of my Coleman tents, but I could recommend Ozark Trail tents if you’re on a really tight budget, and if you’re camping only in perfect weather.

*This is a picture of the ceiling mesh on the roof of the Ozark Trail 10-Person Cabin Tent.*

In fact, this 10-Person Ozark Trail Tent is actually perfectly functional in fair weather, or for backyard camping, it’s super spacious, I can’t even reach the top of the tent, the set up and pack up is pretty simple, and with a little bit of care, you can get quite a few uses out of this Ozark Trail tent.

*This is a picture of me (5’3″) standing upright and stretching my arm out to the very top of the Ozark Trail 10-Person Cabin Tent, which has a peak height of 88 inches.*

Bonus Reading!

For a more in-depth review of how this Ozark Trail Tent compares against not just Coleman, but Core Equipment, Outdoor Products, and Columbia, check out this blog post: I Bought & Tested the 6 BEST 10-Person Tents!

*This is a picture of a few of my 10-person tents in my yard. From left to right: Core 10-Person Tent, Columbia Mammoth Creek 10-Person Tent, Coleman WeatherMaster 10-Person Tent.*

Or, check out an in-depth review of 14 different Coleman tents in this blog post: I Bought & Tested the 14 BEST Coleman Tents!

*This is the thumbnail I used for my 14 Best Coleman Tents video. From left to right: Coleman Instant Cabin 4-Person Tent, Coleman WeatherMaster 10-Person Tent, and Coleman Sundome 6-Person Tent.*

Or, check out the tents that I tested for this post: